Ties That Bind
by Liebling
Summary: ‘How quickly things go awry.’ angsty (RonHermione) and (ViktorHermione) ‘Thank you Viktor...she thinks...you’ve made my life miserable.’ twisted :)


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**Author's Note:** Angsty Ron/Hermione & Hermione/Viktor. Woop woop. Set after Hogwarts :) I dunno, it's okay.

**Disclaimer:** All JK's

' When everything seems like the movies

Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive.'

~ 'Iris' by the Goo Goo Dolls 

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There are so many questions in this dream that we call reality. There are so many questions that he thinks about. So many answers she avoids. There is so much history, in this relationship.  There are so many ties. Ties that bind.

She wants to tell him nothing, and all he wants to know is her soul.

'Whatever happened with you and Krum?'

'Nothing, isn't that obvious? Nothing ever happened.  We lost contact...we, you know, grew up.'

He rolls his eyes and she wants to scream at him. She wants to scream at him 'I love you, don't be so stupid. I love you, that was years ago.'

He has seen the old letters. Love letters in dirty boxes.  Viktor's messy writing, ink stains, torn envelopes. He had seen at all.  She ran to the letters, held them close, told him nothing was going on: 'They're old,' she said, 'I was a child.'

He doesn't really believe this. Not really meaning at all.

Nothing's ever going to be the same.

They're dated in the present, days ago, some even hours ago.  She's telling Viktor she loves him and misses him, and this summer she'll visit Bulgaria. He's telling her he hasn't forgotten, and this summer sounds nice.

In a very old letter, she expresses how much she hates lying to Ron. How much she loves him too. She says 'Ron is part of my childhood...he's a very old friend, and I can't do this to him.'  You can hear Viktor laughing through the paper, but maybe that's just in her mind.  He's telling her, in writing no less, that it's okay, it'll all be okay. 'Summer time,' he says, 'in Bulgaria is marvelous.'

In a more recent letter, she says, 'Ron doesn't look me in the eyes anymore' and 'Ron thinks something's up. Is something up Viktor?'  His handwriting is unsteady in this one, and the time on it is somewhere over midnight.  He writes, very carefully: 'I miss you.' And that is all.

She remembers the Yule Ball. She remembers Ron being jealous, mad. She remembers wanting Ron even though she was with a Star.  She was a Star then too.  An older boy who played quidditch, he was nothing like Ron. He loved her hair, he loved her smile, he didn't get jealous, he liked the library.  

She hid the letters well.  Underneath their bed.  The bed they slept in...together.  The bed with the blue comforter and purple sheets.  She hid the letters well, or so she thought.

Ron never really trusted her, she knew. He was always very suspicious. Very cynical after Harry died.  He wanted so bad to trust her.

Viktor doesn't know any of this. Hermione was happy before Viktor, and she was happy after...until that letter came.  He couldn't let her get away, he had put his life on hold, he missed her.

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But that had been years ago, really. Years and years and years. And what so impressive about her? She was just a girl, a fourteen-year old girl then, with a big smile and knotted hair.  A little girl.  What was so impressive about her...he could have anyone he wanted.

They were happily married. Her and Ron. He was her everything, and she his.  They had a nice life and a beautiful home, Voldemort was gone and the world spun.  She was horrendously head over heels in love with him. There was no doubt.  She had grown up with him.

And then she got the letter, and she wrote back, and another came only a day later...and she wrote back.  It was all so quick, within days she was pouring out her heart to Viktor. Everything she felt for him back then.  The letters following the Yule Ball she thought of too.   Everything from her childhood came back to haunt her.

She had grown up why couldn't he do the same?

She remembers Viktor kissing her. Her first kiss.  Out near the pitch, where they walked after the Yule Ball ended.  It was a simple kiss, and she didn't tell anyone.  

She wanted so much to share things with Ron and Harry, but they would not want to hear them. They would get angry, they always did.  Viktor was so much better, he listened to her...he didn't call her a stupid know-it-all, he didn't...he liked her from the start. He treated her like an equal.

It was funny, she mused, how all of these things came back to you at precisely the wrong time.

He's got a flat in Bulgaria and he goes to the pub nightly.  Ale.  What else is new?  He's taken to drinking; his Mother and Father have died.  His siblings living with an old aunt.  He's not a quidditch star anymore, he's just a boy...just a man. His looks have faded, and no one looks at him anymore. He's not a nice picture...he's just a boy, a man, struggling to live his life.  

It was funny too, she mused, how people got their happily ever... but it never lasted forever.  

It was _so_ easy to go running back to your childhood and what was comfortable. Ron knew her too well, Ron knew every nook and cranny of her and he knew everything.  He knew that she liked jelly on her toast, he knew she hated the way he was jealous, the way she wanted to be a Mother so badly.  He knew that just because you were strong didn't mean you weren't human.

Viktor knew the fourteen- year old Hermione...the little girl, who wasn't near as pretty as the others.  She was very vulnerable, he thought, even though everyone else thought she was so strong. She really wasn't.  She was the girl in the library, the girl in the kitchens, the girl with the boys. She was just Hermione Jane Granger...she was no Princess.

She really loved him back then.

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But back to the present, where the past still lingers and the scars don't heal. Back to the present where there is still Ron, just a boy loving a girl. Loving the girl he's loved forever, where there's been no one else in his heart.  He's hunting through the letters now, and she clutches them dearly.  'I want you to understand' she says calmly 'why I did this.'

He reads them quickly, skimming them, just making out the words 'love' and 'soon.'  He reads them in disbelief.  How quickly things go awry.

She just stares at him, and the look of pain on his face. _Thank you Viktor_...she thinks..._you've made my life miserable._

It was hard to blame Viktor anyway though.  He was just a boy loving a girl.

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'Ron.'

'Yes, Hermione?'

'I'm sorry.

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There are so many questions in this dream that we call reality. There are so many questions that he thinks about. So many answers she avoids. There is so much history, in this relationship.  There are so many ties. Ties that bind.

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